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Ben Carroll was considering kicking in the front door of a West Side house that was on fire
early yesterday when someone finally answered his pounding.

Even then, the man didn’t believe Carroll, who was delivering
The Dispatch in the Hilltop neighborhood.

“I said, ‘You’re thinking someone’s prankin’ you,’ but I’m like, ‘Dude, your house is on fire,'"
Carroll said yesterday as he recounted the story.

Carroll, 28, was delivering papers on his bicycle about 5 a.m. when he smelled smoke. Then he
saw flames on the side of the two-story frame house at 176 Midland Ave.

“I banged on the front door, and no one answered,” he said yesterday. “Then I called the fire
department.

“Then I went around and banged on the side door, and no one answered. I could see a child
through a little window. I just kept banging and yelling and banging and yelling.”

Once the resident saw flames, he ran back inside to rouse the others. Within minutes, five
adults and six children ran out the door. Carroll helped them across the street as firefighters
arrived. No one was injured.

Battalion Chief Patrick Ferguson said the fire started on the back porch and spread to the
kitchen, causing $10,000 in damage. Ferguson said the cause is under investigation.

A call to the owner of the Midland Avenue house, Nate McDaniel, was not returned.

It wasn’t the first time a
Dispatch carrier has alerted people that their home was on fire.

A carrier in 1990 ran through a burning apartment building on the South Side and was credited
with saving seven people. In 1987, a carrier woke two people on the North Side as fire threatened
their condo.

Jen Wholaver, one of the residents of the Midland Avenue house, said she and her husband, Gary,
are grateful that Carroll woke them.

“We really have no way to thank him,” Mrs. Wholaver said.

Carroll doesn’t consider himself a hero.

“I just happened to be at the right place at the right time, and I did what I was supposed to
do,” he said.

Carroll’s girlfriend and fellow
Dispatch carrier, Jennifer Michaels, said she is proud of him.

“He was walking down the street doing his job, and he ended up saving a bunch of kids’ lives and
adults,” she said. “He’s a hero whether he wants to believe it or not.”